Monday, January 7, 2008

Pride and Anxiety

If we look past Him, we must not be suprised if we fail to find God and experience errors and disillusionments, if the world seems dark to us. When we believe, we must believe in spite of God's hiddenness. This hiddenness of God necessarily reminds us of our human limitation. We do not believe out of our personal reason and power. Anyone you really believes knows that. The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts. We would rather not live by grace. Something energetically rebels against it. We do not wish to receive grace; at best we prefer to give ourselves grace. The swing to and fro between pride and anxiety is man's life. Faith bursts through both. Of his own strength a man cannot do it.

Karl Barth

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